CHAP. 29.—THE GENERATION OF SPIDERS.
Spiders couple [Note] backwards, and produce maggots like eggs;
for I ought not to defer making some mention of this subject,
seeing, in fact, that of most insects there is hardly anything
else to be said. All these eggs they lay in their webs, but
scattered about, as they leap from place to place while laying
them. The phalangium is the only spider that lays a considerable number of them, in a hole; and as soon as ever
the progeny is hatched it devours its mother, and very often
the male parent as well, for that, too, aids in the process of
incubation. These last produce as many as three hundred
eggs, the others a smaller number. Spiders take three days
to hatch their eggs. They come to their full growth in
twenty-eight days.